IPSWICH: Key figures in Ipswich’s health arena are set to meet this week to discuss the future of healthcare in Ipswich.

Michelle Bevan-Margetts, Ipswich Borough Council’s new portfolio holder for health and wellbeing, has called for a meeting with the major players in health, including Carole Taylor-Brown, chief executive of NHS Suffolk, and Andrew Reed, Ipswich Hospital chief executive, to work out how people in the town can get better healthcare in the future.

She has called for a guarantee that no more services will be lost from Ipswich Hospital and says that with the change in government, and the White Paper into health reform, there is a chance to change things.

The White Paper announced that Primary Care Trusts and Strategic Health Authorities will be scrapped within the next couple of years, and instead, GP consortias will take over managing local health budgets.

The meeting, which will be held on Wednesday, will also see Mark Halladay from Suffolk Mental Health Partnership Trust and a representative for GPs in attendance.

Mrs Bevan-Margetts, said: “This is all about discussing a way forward for Ipswich’s health strategy. No longer is Ipswich going to be like a second-class citizen. We have an opportunity to shape the future of Ipswich for others to follow our lead.”

As well as seeking to improve the failing stroke services at Ipswich Hospital, Mrs Bevan-Margetts also wants to fight to get a specialist heart centre at the Heath Road site.

The Evening Star’s Have a Heart Appeal is raising money to put towards a catheter laboratory at Ipswich Hospital where specialist heart surgery can be carried out. The hope is once this is established, a Primary Percutaneous Coronary Intervention centre could be built, where emergency heart attack patients could get surgery.

n What do you think is best for the future of Ipswich’s healthcare? Write to Your Letters, Evening Star, 30 Lower Brook Street, Ipswich, IP4 1AN, or e-mail eveningstarletters@eveningstar.co.uk.